Scott Guthrie on ASP.net, Azure and Open Source

Scott Guthrie has made a big bounce at Microsoft. He was the key developer of ASP.net and now he’s the Corporate VP for Windows Azure. At the 2012 Silicon Valley Code Camp conference, I spoke with Guthrie about ASP.net and its tools, as well as the potential of Windows Azure and open source.

Here are some highlights from our discussion.

While the tools for ASP.net are fantastic, it’s less so for Azure. Guthrie said Microsoft is trying to make Visual Studio the ultimate IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for cloud-based solutions.

Support for some scenarios are admittedly weak or nonexistent, such as data partitioning, data sharing, multi-tier and end-to-end diagnostics. Microsoft is working to build those out.

Most people don’t understand that Azure has the unique ability to do PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) together. In a way they can partner and be competitive with services such as Rackspace and Amazon EC2.

Microsoft is embracing more open source technologies. This will allow you to simultaneously use a combination of tech in the Microsoft ecosystem and the open source ecosystem.